July 7th Skin Thoughts and Reviews
Monday, July 7, 2008 by wulfn1 | Discussion: Community
This week I did some playing around with Misty Mint by Jazzymjr , and inverted the colors in windowblinds configuration panel to get this skin just the colors I wanted. The look was great and when this blind is not recolored it is still very pretty. The only bad note to recoloring this blind in the manner I chose , is some of the text became too light on the green background to view easily. I was still able to see it , it was just a strain on my eyes.
Hunter by Pixel Z , mirrored to show off the design to it's best advantage with the start menu open , is the wall I picked out for this skin. I love dragonflies and the simple three dimensional design of these beauties made a great "look" for my desktop.
SE Interface (green) by mrSkope is the icon package I thought worked best in this instance. I tried to make it colorize to match the green in the blind and wall, but this is one that doesn't like recolor. I'm not sure if it's because of it's age ,or if Iconpackager has a hard time with it, but either way it stayed a kelly green that didn't quite match the yellowed green of the theme.
For a good CursorFX set , I chose Neon Lights by squirrelman21 . I recolored again, to match the scheme I set up. This cursor looked almost like the wing of the dragonflies in the wall, and in fact when positioned in the right way, looked almost as if it was part of the wall. The cursor is sharp, and cleanly made with ease of use and good recolorization ability.
SoftMetal Media `bOx by HAPTORK id a treat to view and works nicely when played. I learned with this player how to make it work without having the program associated pop up. I am glad it was so easy to configure , as some of the media players I've used aren't as easy to understand. I found out all I have to do is click on the play list and drop and drag any music I chose to listen to into the player. I get the feeling this is how most all of these players work, but it was only on this one that the manner in which to use it came so easily for me.
Slick Weather by Mormegil is a clean little weather widget that takes little room on my desktop but can be expanded to include more information. I love Mormegil's work it always looks like something three dimensional.
Bamboo calender by latin4567 matched nicely with the bamboo theme of the wall, I just had to use it for my calendar widget.
on of my favorite artists for desktopx items is pjpowell . His works are clean fast and do exaxtly what they say they will. for this reason, I chose White Clock/Net Meter by pjpowell as my clock widget. This tiny little device works like a charm, and seems to fit like a charm within the whole scheme of things here. I love the netmeter feature hiding within the clock itself.
Lastly, I GoodLuck rc pack by Fairyy~~, the one without the shamrock. This right click package has two designs. with and without a shamrock. I chose without because shamrocks just don't belong in bamboo forests!
All in all this setup is probably one I will use again , despite the difficulty viewing the text when recolored. I am planning on figuring out how to alter that to my liking. Once I figure it out, I'll be sure to let ya'll know how.
I tried out a red blind this week, I'm not normally a red kind of person, but I thought what the hey, gotta test everything I can, and I bet there are those out there who like a red blind. The blind I chose for this was Running by bushman . This blind was easy to use, and not hard on the eye, as you might expect a red blind to be.
The blind didn't have the usual grey scale or black contrasts ,instead it had a greenish hue'd contrast which gave the look a sense of style. The stylised runner within the start menu is difficult to recognise without the title, so it made it easy to find complimentary skins to go with it.
for the wall , I used Gossamer Red by Frankief . I like Frankief's fractals they have depth and the color combinations are very pretty. This wall had a slight touch of the greenish color used in the blind and it really flowed with the running man theme in the start panel.
I chose Dark Shine by sunx for my icon package. I recolored it slightly to catch the brightness of the blind and wall. This pakage has a full set of icons , and recolors nicely.
Zippo Weather by neop is a great desktopx widget to use here. Though it has a flame in the upper left corner, the color and the swirling design also made a good match for the rest of the theme I used.
I found a neat taskbar style widget in the form of Simplex QB by Grimnir M . There are quite a few features in this little widget, though the links provided in the dropdown weren't to my liking. It was easy to remove them and place the icon links I wanted there by just dragging and dropping. Once you drag the item from the dropdown, its gone. And its that easy to add them , drag them and drop them right in.
I used the Blacklight rc by Buzzh58 for my right click menu. I've used this skin before and it has a simple structure that goes with many of the themes I put together.
Red Flame 1.5 by TYCUS is the CursorFX theme I used here. Didn't even have to recolor it. The animations in this cursor are cool, in their "hotness" and make for a pleasant viewing experience.
Finally today, I wanted to show you a fun theme I made for my grandbaby. Note here, Tatobug picked everything out,I merely reported it here for you and captured a screenie of it to show it off... virtual refrigerator!
To start off, I found GREENFIELD by DEZIN and used it for my wall. This wall has a kids television show look to it and made a cute background for all the fun things tatobug wanted on her "computer".
I recolored Mirage by Night Train into a bright barbie pink. The balloony look of this skin worked perfectly with the cartoon theme we created.
When I opened up my IconPackager program, she immediately honed in on Candy Vivian by yangge again the barbie pink is really a theme with this one!
I found some really cute Object Dock icon sets , one of which made tatobug squeal with delight. animals set 1 by ethylmorphin is just adorable, and there are enough animals in this set to create some great looks.
The animals had to have somewhere to sit down, and while we were hunting, tatobug picked out Pink Plastic Sofa by bk12GarbageMan . Under any other circumstances I would have probably found this background to be garish and slightly incomplete, but with this look it made perfect sense. I am willing to bet this type of theme is the look for which this design was made. Over all, it turned out cute.
I insisted on having a clock and so while hunting through the Desktopx library we found this one, which had a wagon just like the one tatobug has here at nana's house. Toy Clock by Tombalaci is just adorable and works just right for this theme. I'll probably use it again somewhere just because it's so cute.
Tweety Bird with sounds by [brazen weep] is flying in the right corner of my screen. He thought he saw a puddytat... I think he did!!
Bouncing Tigger with Tigger sounds by [brazen weep] also, just HAD to be placed on the desktop. "Tigger Pooh" is tatobug's favorite show (my friends tigger and pooh). She totally flipped out when she saw Tigger, and had to have him. She spent the rest of the afternoon mouseover'ing to hear tigger laugh hoohoohooooo and bounce in place on my screen.
Lastly, She chose Evee by Jimvideogamer1000 for my cursorfx theme. I think the cursor is adorable and so didn't mind much, but I have to warn all who might download, Evee is kind of hard to point at things.. she morphs into something else when in wait mode and when trying to click on text , she doesn't quite line up right and sometimes you click the wrong thing. As long as you are aware of this and can double check before clicking, you're in good shape here.
This is Tatobug's first theme , I'm hoping there will be more cute setups she will help me make when she stays at "nana's house" on monday nites. I'll keep you posted!!
Thanks for reading!
Wulfie
Reply #2 Monday, July 7, 2008 2:08 PM
Reply #5 Monday, July 7, 2008 11:19 PM
and yeah, it was funny recoloring that blind, especially when grandbaby insisted it needed to be "PINKER NANNY!!!"
Reply #7 Monday, July 7, 2008 11:36 PM
Reply #9 Tuesday, July 8, 2008 12:07 AM
Reply #11 Tuesday, July 8, 2008 4:03 AM
Sorry Lantec but that wallpaper is in 1280x1024 only
Thank you Wulfn1 for using my work!
Reply #12 Tuesday, July 8, 2008 6:25 AM
Reply #13 Tuesday, July 8, 2008 7:38 AM
I like trying out color inversion on all the skins I use. you'd be surprised how very different the skins look!
pixelZ01 you make it easy to choose your work! it looks so great!!
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Reply #1 Monday, July 7, 2008 1:38 PM
rofl.....I'm sure NT will appreciate the plug....gotta catch my breath.......
Very good read! Thanks
I missed that first wall by Pixel Z......wish there was a 1600x1200 version....it's sharp